The sow breeding quality will directly affect the survival rate and the growth quality of piglets. During sow breeding, the requirements on feeds are as follows:
firstly, the feed should be fresh, moist and softened, therefore is good in taste and appetizing. Actually, the feed, which is too dry or includes a lot of powder, will affect the taste, even induce respiratory diseases of the sows and indirectly affect the growth of the piglets;
secondly, sows eat randomly and will not eat at time points set by a breeder. Therefore, it may cause two situations: the feed is exhausted when the sows want to eat, and the feed is supplied when the sows do not want to eat. While, the feed after long-term exposure may be dehydrated and thus not suitable for eating by the sows;
thirdly, if fresh feed is not eaten by the sows in time, it is likely to be fermented, deteriorated and thus wasted. If the sows eat deteriorated feeds which contain a lot of harmful bacteria, the sow milk quality will decline, causing diarrhea and even death of the piglets. Meanwhile, deteriorated feeds have an unpleasant odor, which also affects the health of the piglets;
fourthly, a large number of breeders need to be employed for 24-hour breeding monitoring, which may cause huge breeding cost and is unbearable for normal pig breeding farms.
There is an automatic feeder in the market, and a working principle of the automatic feeder is that when a sow touches a sensor of the feeder, a feed is automatically discharged from a feeding spout to a feeding tank to be eaten by sows. However, the automatic feeder does not solve all of the above technical problems yet. This conventional automatic feeder cannot ensure that the feed in the feeding tank is eaten by the sows in time, that the feeder is launched when the sows want to eat, and that the health of the piglets won't be indirectly affected by excessive deteriorated feed in the feeding tank.